There's a ghost in my mouth (and it talks in my sleep)
by Antigone2
Summary: The desolate and destroyed Crystal Tokyo is heavy with ghosts of things lost. Mamoru feels the most lost of them all.


From a prompt on tumblr: what if Usagi and Mamoru had not yet reunited (after the R break up) when they went to future, and they weren't aware of who Usagi married

* * *

There are certain things he refuses to touch, he doesn't want them speaking to him. Broken glass and shattered crystal, dark stains on gilded walls that must have been white, once.

Crystal Tokyo is empty, echoing, and the very air is reaching, reaching toward Mamoru - a million painful moments want to be heard, to be felt. He blocks his empathy, his gloves shielding his hands from the psychometry that has been pulsing double time since he and the senshi arrived here - in this dead city, in this arid future.

Mamoru doesn't completely close his mind, however, cannot bear to, because of all the tendrils of consciousness that roam these empty halls, he feels _her_ most of all.

 _Neo-Queen Serenity_ , Sailor Pluto gave a name to Chibi-Usa's mother, the slumbering queen, corpse-like in her tranquility, imperishable in her beauty, unmoving in a coffin of crystal.

But she is Usagi, _Usako,_ Mamoru already knows, even before Sailor Pluto explains. Neo-Queen Serenity is Usagi. Grown, married, and protecting peace on Earth from her crystal fortress, surrounded by her loyal senshi, cherished daughter, and a nameless husband, who lies elsewhere in the palace, struggling to survive his own injuries.

And Mamoru is nowhere. Nowhere in this future, loathsome as it has become, does he have a place. Had he ever had a place.

And what else could he possibly have expected?

In the silence, Neo-Queen Serenity pulls at Mamoru's consciousness from her unnatural sleep. Usagi kneels to comfort Chibi-Usa, who is crying into Sailor Pluto's skirt, small shoulders shaking. Mamoru knows he should be the one to calm the child, to give Usagi a chance to regroup, but he stays back - afraid of what he'll see if he so much as brushes his fingers through Chibi-Usa's soft pink pigtails.

The senshi move on, Chibi-Usa in Sailor Pluto's arms, but Mamoru lingers, for a moment, by the body of the queen. He is not the only one who hangs back.

"Do you think she's...?" Usagi is pale, moreso than usual, and seems smaller somehow, dwarfed by the immense palace and overwhelming future laid before her. She swallows, hard, and presses her fingers to the glass.

"She's alive," Mamoru says. "I feel her."

Usagi sighs, deeply, lifting her eyes to the ceiling so the tears don't fall. "Mamo-chan-"

The need to touch her pulls his fingers into fists, thrums in his very veins, and he denies himself, yet again. He is used to the dull ache of wanting, but not to the ghosts of things that whisper in his ears here - visions of death and fear, sure, but also of happiness of light. Of Usagi's eyes when she smiles at her husband, of Chibi-Usa jumping in puddles, holding hands with her parents - Usagi's imprint is everywhere - everywhere - in this place. It's like being surrounded by her, the echos sparkle with her laughter, sighs, sobs, and confessions of love. Mamoru hates the faceless man who he sees in her arms, and lashes out at the visions until they cease.

His eyes burn.

Why should he be tortured by having to witness this? Why is this broken palace reaching for him, whispering to him, crackling with his physic energy? He wasn't there. Usagi married someone else, got everything she ever wanted and then lost it in a cataclysm so drastic it left an imprint of tragedy on everything here. Mamoru hates that he doesn't know what destroys him more.

"We should go," Mamoru says. Usagi stumbles up to him, wraps her hands around his arm, desperately. He pretends he cannot feel her fear, or her grief. He pretends it does not upend him.

"Mamo-chan," she says, looking at him with imploring eyes, "Please. For Chibi-Usa? For Sailor Pluto... They have no way of knowing."

He knows what she is asking. "Usa-Usagi," he whispers. "I-" He swallows. "I don't know if it will do anything. I don't know if I can read her through that much crystal. I don't think she can tell me anything we don't already know."

Usagi pulls on his glove, the brush of her fingers -even through the fabric of her gloves - is enough to break his resolve. He lets her take off his gloves, savoring the contact with her, no matter how small it is.

She walks with him up to the crystal, and he is thankful for her presence - for the Usagi of his time, who still loves him, who still looks at him with hope, whose heart still calls out to his even when he has closed his mind to her.

This queen - she is no longer his. The ring on her finger shines even under feet of solid stone. This is Usagi as she will be - this is the version of her who does not love him, may not even remember him. He does not want to see this version of Usagi. Does not want to be confronted with the life that fate decided he was unworthy of. But, for Chibi-Usa, for Usako, he takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes, and presses his hands to the crystal.

And she rushes up to meet him. His hands burn with the energy, and he sees her in flashes: her wedding, the building of Crystal Tokyo, Chibi-Usa's - they call her Small Lady - birth, happy moments that turn black when the attack comes, purple eyes seethe from under a shock of white hair, she screams, and the visions go dark. _Protect Small Lady,_ she begs. _Find my husband. Protect them._ Her pleas are colored with so much love, desperate, thick, aching love, that Mamoru has to pull his hands away.

His grief and self loathing prevents him from hearing her last whisper, from seeing the truth. _Endymion..._

He sinks to his knees.

Usagi runs to him, puts her small arms around his shoulders. "Mamo-chan! Mamo-chan! Are you okay?"

Mamoru puts his hands to his face, but he can't hide the tears, hot in his eyes, nor the sobs that shake his shoulders. "She lost everything," he manages to say. He can't speak more. Because he knows how she feels.


End file.
